(Currently out-of-print.) A girl named Emily wakes up excited for her first day of school and for breakfast with her entire household, which includes her mother and three other women who help parent her. It is unclear what the relationship of the women is to each other; there is no indication whether any or all of them are romantic partners, but they are living cooperatively together. And while none of the women are definitively queer, queerness seems likely, especially since author Jane Severance, a lesbian herself, also wrote the first clearly LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ book in English, When Megan Went Away.
The women are definitely parenting partners, though. “Each woman helped take care of Emily,” we read, and each does special things with her. Annie Jo is a carpenter and likes to have Emily help cook dinner; Vicki is a school bus driver and takes Emily to the library; Shadowoman is a healer, who likes to sew and draw and garden, often with Emily’s assistance; Emily’s mother Jill is studying to be an electrician, and likes to do “everything” with Emily, including sing, walk in the park, and tell bedtime stories.
Annie Jo and Shadowoman walk with Emily on her first day of school. Emily is nervous and glad for their support. Emily joins a group of other students who are talking about their family members, and one boy asks her, “What do you have?” Emily answers, “I have lots of mommies.” The other children laugh, saying, “You do not,” “That’s dumb,” and “You’re just a liar.” Emily looks for the teacher, who has met all of the women, but the teacher is helping another student. Emily is sad and “felt like crying.”
“She knew lots of different kinds of families,” Emily reflects. “Just because hers was different didn’t mean it wasn’t true.”
When Emily falls off the jungle gym and hurts her arm, the teacher asks if her mother is still around. The bus driver says she’ll call Emily’s mother Vicki. Another parent says that she’ll call Emily’s mother Annie Jo, who is fixing her roof. A passing neighbor says he saw Shadowoman nearby and goes to get her. In each case, the teacher replies—more in confusion than opposition, it seems—that Emily’s mother is Jill.
The four women converge on the scene (including Jill, although we don’t know how she was notified). Shadowoman fixes Emily’s arm, which seems to have been dislocated. All of the women hug Emily. The other children affirm that she does have lots of mommies, “And they all take care of her!”
Emily and Jill appear Asian; Vicki appears Black, and Shadowoman appears White.
